So, if one minute of angle is ROUGHLY one inch at 100 yards, a one inch group at 100 FEET would extrapolate to three inches at 100 Yards; pretty much three MOA.

Acceptance figures for service rifles of other "foreign" design were fairly similar.

Close enough for government work. Every so often, the stars, and the hand-fitted parts, would align and result in a rifle that would shoot the standard issue ball ammo into smaller groups. As the years passed, such oddities were separated out and tagged for "marksmen" and very soon afterwards, for conversion to "sniper" rigs.

A "sub-MOA", mass produced battle rifle would be an interesting thing to see in mud and sand. Anyway, looking at early tactics, rifles seem to have been regarded as expensive extension handles for bayonets. Bayonets (and cavalry sabres) were regarded as the "Proper" weapons of civilized warfare. Take a close look at the design of a Lee Enfield (and P-13 / 14, '03 Springfield, etc.) butt for a glimpse into the thinking of the day.

There is an old line about some early 20th Century military rifles:

"The Germans built a hunting rifle, the Americans built a target rifle and the Britishicon built a battle rifle".
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